Betrayal, AKA the Reaon I'm Me
by KibaKibbles
Summary: It's easy to dismiss her as evil and leave it at that, but in reality Drew had been just the same as everyone else. It's only when the pain became too great that she succumbed


**Summary: It's easy to dismiss her as evil and leave it at that, but in reality Drew had been just the same as everyone else. It's only when the pain became too great that she became twisted.**

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><p>The reason why she acted the way she did – pretending to be nice, throwing everyone's feelings around for her own satisfaction, tormenting everyone… Perhaps it's easier for her to blame it all on her mother, Aphrodite. But in reality, a much harsher reality, she's just in pain. She is the classic bully. Too hurt from others and desperate to bring others down with her – so they can all live in misery, and then perhaps it wouldn't be considered misery any longer.<p>

When she was a kid she didn't know what was wrong with her, she was pretty, she had wished no harm to fall upon anyone. And yet it was her who had to listen to messages from all the parents of her "friends" who decided the day before that they didn't want to go to her birthday party. Her only friend, the one she'd only hung around because she didn't want to be alone, was the only one who showed up – who would ever show up. Perhaps, in the end when they stopped speaking, she just wanted to show her only friend the pain she went through. Or perhaps, she'd always been like that and the others had seen her true self and stayed away. But in the end she reasoned that everyone else had just been jealous - it was easier than admitting her own faults.

Whatever it was, she abandoned her only friend at 8-years old and moved onto others. She would brag about her mother, a model is what her dad claims she was. She never knew her mother, yet she'd wished the woman never existed. Forever her father would compare the two - and Drew knew from the admiration in her father's eyes whenever he spoke of the absent woman, that she could never live up to what he saw in her. Her mother had been beauty itself. Drew, while beautiful, was only a shadow of it. But even Drew wasn't shallow enough to hate the woman for her beauty, the true reason she hated her mother was because in all her father's praise she was still gone and had abandoned him.

And yet Drew was somehow the disappointment.

But she tried to block out her father as she reminisced in her dark cabin – away from Mitchell, Lacy, and the new leader Piper. She didn't want to think of him anymore, that's why Camp Half-Blood was her new home. She didn't even like camp, she'd arrived at camp when she was 17-years old, a year before the Titan War in New York City. During her years being at camp there she'd never connected with anyone, but that didn't make her cry anymore. She wasn't a child and she wasn't going to allow herself to get hurt anymore. The last person she'd let into her life destroyed her.

Her name was Mara. Mara Newman, they'd met in 4th grade when Drew moved to a new school. They had both been new but Drew had arrived three months before her. And in those three months Drew was the outcast and had been bullied. She still remembered the girl who would tell her that her mother left because she never loved her, and the other girl who would hit her, or the whole classroom laughing at her. The moment she saw Mara and how she just radiated a calm niceness, she wanted to be her friend. Luckily Mara did too.

Those were the happiest times in her life. Every day they would sit together in lunch and trade peanut butter sandwiches or talk about the coolest gym shoes. She'd sleep over at her house for days, having Mara's mother joke that she'd got another daughter. They would go "shopping" on the weekends. Though, because Drew's own father was struggling with his failing business it was mostly her watching her friend buy clothes. But she didn't mind, or at least she wouldn't let it bother her.

Mara didn't have a father, they would talk about how if their parents married they would become sisters. But Drew had already thought of Mara as such, and didn't want her world with Mara to be destroyed by her father. So when she suggested they set up a date, she lied and told her father the wrong day to show up.

The years passed and Drew extended her world to others. Mara was always there and she became her crutch to the world.

_You always looked so scary, I was too afraid to talk to you._

Or,

_You're really tall and intimidating, but now that I know you I realized I was wrong._

Drew wondered if that was really why for so long she had been alone and friendless. It wasn't her fault that she was tall or that her eyebrows were set in a forever frown – it was unfair that for so long she'd been deprived such a basic need because of how she looked. And deep down the spite she had in her heart began to spread to everyone, even her new friends, but never Mara.

In high school she and Mara drifted, but not too far. Just enough for both of their worlds to become a little bigger. Drew experienced a new emotion, love. It had started as a crush in middle school. His name was Randy. She hid her feelings surprisingly well from him, she simply enjoyed being around him and laughing at his jokes. She enjoyed following him to all the places she may not have wanted to go, or staying up late to hang out when she was dead tired, because she really enjoyed every moment they spent together. It was her fear of moving onto the next step, of getting rejected, of looking foolish that made her silent. She somehow friend zoned herself, but even still she loved him.

That day her world shattered is still clear in her head, her 16th birthday. There are a lot of things about that day that she'll never forget. Like the birthday card she saw one of her friends scribble before giving it to her when she thought she wasn't looking, or how she managed to successfully avoid having "Happy Birthday" sung to her in all of her classes.

She had been saving lunch money and spare change for months – starving herself during school and never spending a penny when she went out with her friends or Randy. All so she could treat Mara, Randy and three other friends to a movie.

They walked the short distance from school to the movie theater, laughing the whole way there. Inside they bought popcorn, nachos, and soda. She sat next to Mara who sat next to Randy – she had been disappointed she didn't sit next to him but didn't say anything. They finished the movie only having to be hushed by the people in front of them once because of their chatter. After the movie they walked to Subway next door and luckily everyone ordered their own food. And after that parents came and picked them up one-by-one.

And her heart shattered when she saw Mara and Randy kiss from the back of Mara's mom's car when they thought no one was looking.

**_The people who hurt me the most were the people who swore they never would__._**

Coming to school two days later had been an event. They pretended like nothing happened, leaving Drew wondering if it had really happened. And as much as she wanted to believe that she saw nothing, the truth kept banging in her head and stabbing at her heart.

_I can't help it! You never made a move, you didn't tell him how you felt! He asked me out, what was I supposed to do?_

Mara's words rang empty in her head. Mara, who had been her first friend in a world that had always felt distant to her. Mara, her sister.

"Don't speak to me ever again!" Drew yelled at her with tears in her eyes, "Don't come near me again!"

And like magic Mara didn't. She didn't say another word to reply to her. Since that day Drew had never heard from her again. She didn't know why at the time. At first she was happy Mara seemed to honor her wishes, but as the days passed Drew missed her best friend. She wanted Mara to apologize and them to laugh at it later. But Mara never said a word and avoided her like the plague, and Drew could never bring herself to approach her.

As far as Randy, she pretended everything was okay with him and that she and Mara were still friends. Because even though she felt betrayed and hurt and like she had wasted her years waiting for a guy that would never return her feelings, even after all of that she would still love him if she had to do it again.

It was later when she was shipped off to camp by her dad that she realized she had Charm Speak. It was the only _gift_ her mother gave her, and it ultimately led to her never speaking to the only friend she ever had again.

And so as Drew watched others dying in the camp and preparing for war, all of them ignoring her as if she never existed and dismissing her as a frivolous and airheaded child of Aphrodite. That was what made her click. What was the point in being nice to others who would only hurt her or didn't care about her, why did she have to respect a world that only shunned her and only gave disappointment.

She used her abilities for the first time on a guy named Austin, she told him to dump his girlfriend of two years to hook up with her. When she saw his stunned _ex_-girlfriend from Austin's tender embrace she smirked.

After Silena died she used her abilities even more to gain control of her own cabin. It didn't bother her to use her siblings, they only showed her kindness because they felt they owed it. She took pleasure in breaking hearts and forcing her siblings to do so also. She just wanted them to feel pain, to know heartbreak just as she did. She didn't want to be alone, and sharing her pain was the only way that made sense to her.

When Piper came and threw everything out of balance she'd been pissed but stepped down anyways. She'd still have her fun, nothing could stop her.


End file.
